TBL: Who Pays More For Your Gold, A Pawn Shop Or Jewelry Store?

Want to gamble on the value of your gold jewelry, coins or silver? Then skip the research and take it to a local pawn shop or jewelry store for a quick payoff.

In mid-February, TBL shuttled around Greater Hartford with two gold coins and a Tiffany silver bowl — a stash valued between $1,100 and $1,200 — and received offers as low as $704 and as high as $1,006.

The best of the dozen offers was not from a jewelry store or coin shop or an in-between gold-and-diamond exchange. It was from the Pawn Queen, Sandy Meier, whose shop on the Berlin Turnpike in Wethersfield welcomes visitors with cutie-pie mannequins wearing tiaras and Pawn Queen T-shirts.

Four of the six lowest offers were from jewelry stores, with the top jewelry-store offer, at No. 7 overall, Gem Jewelry in West Hartford ($770) and lowest-overall Becker's Diamonds & Fine Jewelry ($658.85), also in West Hartford.

Here's what was in TBL's precious-metals bag: two Eagle gold-bullion coins (.25 ounces and .10 ounces) and a 13.2-ounce sterling silver Tiffany Clover Bowl. Kitco (www.kitco.com), a major precious-metals clearinghouse, was paying slightly more than $430 and $172, respectively, for the coins at the time. When selling locally, a reasonable commission would be anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent of the day's spot-gold price.

A local appraiser valued the Tiffany Bowl at about $550.

The recession and tightened credit have produced a sudden burst of pawn shops in the area. With fewer people buying jewelry, the jewelry stores have become buyers, too. Now it's a bizarre battle of pawn shops and jewelry stores for your precious-metal valuables.

"So many jewelry stores are buying," says Meier. "I've never seen it like this. And I've been doing this for 26 years. People seem to think because it's a jewelry store they're going to get the highest price. But that's not necessarily true."

When TBL, who did not identify himself during any visit, stopped at the Pawn Queen, Meier checked the price of gold (about $1,730 an ounce that day) before saying she'd offer the coins' actual value minus $50 each.

"I have to make a little money," she said. And, she then offered $500 for the Tiffany bowl.

Last week, she explained her strategy: "I don't make a lot on it, as you can see, because I pay high. I make a little bit, but hopefully I'll get the volume."

Many, but not all area jewelry stores are in buyer's mode. Lux Bond & Green in West Hartford Center wasn't interested in either the coins or the bowl. It recommended Olde Towne Coin Co. in Newington.

De Robertis Jewelers, also in West Hartford Center, was the only prospective buyer that actually wanted to cut into the coins to ensure they were gold. (An alarmed TBL, who did not own the coins, declined.) It, too, recommended Olde Towne, before offering $265 for the bowl.

At Olde Towne, a man checked the price of gold on his cellphone ($1,729 an ounce) before offering 90 percent of liquidation price on the larger coin and 88 percent on the smaller coin. Another worker translated, using a calculator: $380 and $152. With a $400 offer on the bowl, Olde Towne had the second-highest collective bid, $932.

TBL could have done even better with the coins, however, at Dynamic Coin & Jewelry in Wethersfield, which offered $400 and $155. Despite an offer of only $275 for the bowl, Dynamic still had the third-highest collective offer ($832).

Fast Eddy in West Hartford advertises like other pawn shops but is, in fact, a "gold and diamond exchange." Yet Fast Eddy, at least on TBL's visit, wore a handgun on his hip.

TBL: "So you've got your own security guard with you."

Fast Eddy: "Absolutely."

TBL walked out with an offer of $771 for the precious metals and a deeper understanding of gold and jewelry exchanges.

At Good Ole Tom's in West Hartford, an employee offered the second-lowest overall package price ($726) and some good-ole advice. He suggested looking online for the value of the bowl, that it might be two or three times higher than his $219 offer. (It was.)

"And I've been following gold a long time," he said. "I think it's still going up. You could get more if you hold on to it."

Thanks, Good Ole Tom's. It's true: If you knew what you had in the first place, you probably wouldn't be walking into a pawn shop — even a jewelry store — looking for a quick sale.

"That's interesting that you feel that way," says Emmett Murphy of the National Pawnbrokers Association, the industry's only trade association. "And I think that's correct. Pawn stores are a place people go to borrow small-dollar, short-term money. The national average is $150, and in many communities it's actually less than that.

"It's a common misconception that a pawn is a sale. People often say they're going to pawn something when they're looking to sell it. But the core of the pawnbroker's business is overwhelmingly the loan. Pawnbrokers want to make the loan."